NANO ZEN

Today my partners, FSL, and I announced the release of BarricadeMX 2.2, the latest version of my comprehensive anti-spam software for POSIX mail servers, in particular Linux, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD. In addition versions for Windows and Mac OS X have been ported and are currently being tested.

Along with the usual plethora of speed, accuracy, and bug fixes that are part of any major release, are several new features and enhancements:

Enhanced Message-ID for Email Watermark (EMEW) Version 2

Improved outbound message “water-marking” reduces the threat of Denial of Service due to “bounce message” floods. With EMEW it is now possible to selectively apply different secrets by individual sender, sender domain, or sender account for outbound tagging and validation of of inbound non-delivery reports or content white listing of replies. This allows an ISP to apply EMEW only for those domains known to use the ISP outbound mail servers exclusively and exclude those domains that might use a mixed mail server model.

Attachment Reject Policies

Using simple file name patterns, deny attachments based on attachment
name, content-type, and/or file names found in .zip and .rar compressed
archives.

Time limited recipient addresses

Easily generate safe and disposable time limited email addresses as part of user’s regular mail address. Intended for use by users who want to supply short lived addresses to questionable web sites registration forms or mailing lists.

Digest DNS Blacklist Support

Originally intended for use with the Malware Hash Registry, it can be used with other similar blacklists. Support for other distributed hashes, such as Vipul’s Razor, Pyzor, and DCC is being considered.

Sophos AV Support

Sophos AV has been added to the already supported AV engines: Avast, ClamAV, F-Prot.

More RFC Supprot

RFC 1652 8BITMIME simple pass-through support now advertised with EHLO capabilities list.

RFC 1870 SMTP SIZE parameter extension supported and can be used in conjunction with the existing access-map size limitation tags length-connect:, length-from:, and length-to: for rejections based on SIZE at RCPT TO: command instead of end of message.

DNS, URI, and NS BL Additions

Now possible to check IP addresses and URI found within selected headers against blacklists. Also experimental options to check URI name servers against specialised NS blacklists now available.

Technical questions concerning the software or documentation, please contact me via SnertSoft directly. Otherwise to arrange for demos, discuss pricing, speciality needs, or other POSIX based platforms please contact my partners FSL.

Have finally updated the blog software to WordPress 2.7. Not as painful as I was anticipating.

I have a theory if you anticipate the worst, things typically work first go, but you waste lots of time and energy being paranoid; of course that one time you’re not paranoid or too complacent about installing an upgrade happens to be that one time when the shit hits the fan. The same is true with computer hardware; when you install a new interface card or memory and carefully close up the box, before testing the new hardware, you always end up having to reopen the box because: the card / memory wasn’t seated properly; you unseated a cable by accident that just happened to get caught on your sleeve cuff button; forget to reconnect a cable you disconnected so you get your hands inside, etc. Sometimes I think Murphy was the court jester to God.